The Exception
by Rot-Chan
Summary: They had prayed, preachers had preached, begged to God - but no one was exempt. Yet Uchiha Sasuke awakes a survivor of the Plague, an exception, taken in by a group of survivors trying to find others alive in this dystopian world:: SasuSaku apocalypse-fic
1. Chapter 1

**THE EXCEPTION**

**Summary**: They had prayed, the preachers had preached, begged to God...but no one was exempt. Yet Uchiha Sasuke awakes a survivor of The Sickness, an exception, taken in by a group of survivors trying to find others who may be alive in this dystopian world.

**Rating**: T

**Pairings**: SasuSaku; ShikaIno

**Notes**: Inspired by the idea of a post-apocalyptic world, the movie 28 Days Later, and the Stephen King book The Stand. I plan to include pairings but romance isn't going to be extremely heavy in a horror/scifi-drama story like this one. Reviews are greatly appreciated.

* * *

**CHAPTER 1**

* * *

When he awoke, Sasuke felt lost.

The place beneath his ribs - hollow. It felt hollow. But his heart belied this sinking feeling, pulsing slowly, rhythmically, dreamily...

It was the hospital. He was in the hospital. Knocked out for a while. Days, maybe. It felt like days. Because he couldn't remember what had come before the days of being in a restless place, a deep yet troubled sleep, a state of absence, of being lost...

It was twelve oh three. Twelve oh three in the afternoon but nobody was around, no nurse, no doctor. No patients, either. And he had a double room. Sasuke frowned. He felt pain in his shoulder, neck, back, body, tiny tingling itching pains he could not place. Dull pains, the pain that lingers.

But he got up - had to get up - couldn't very well just sit in this _bed_ all day; ripped out the IV, which hurt, and moved, which hurt worse, but Sasuke had to get out of this bed and put on his clothing.

He found the clothing - some clothing. Nice clothing, compared to that thin gown. A pair of sweatpants. A shirt. No coat. And it was January. He was cold. Had to admit that.

Sasuke rubbed his hands together and thought about where he could get a drink.

The tap water would suffice. He took a dixie cup filled with pills, tossed the pills, and drank the tap. But the water on his tongue was surprisingly nauseating. His head felt light, and he felt rather ill. He knew he was not dead, not asleep - but still was ill.

But Sasuke heard no one. No sound. Everything was too still.

So he opened the door -

And around him there was chaos, the remnants of a fight, an evacuation, a struggle? Overturned carts and scattered papers and trays everywhere, abandoned.

He had been abandoned.

It rang out, clear and strangely calm in his thoughts. Abandoned. Left to sleep and lie there for however long, until he regained some senses and happened to wake up (which, for whatever reason, had been now, today, whatever day it was). And clearly, no one was left. Perhaps no one remained, for it seemed desolate, absolutely void of another person, which he could almost feel.

Sasuke walked as best as he possibly could. It was a very slow and awkward sort of walk, which displeased him because he wasn't used to this feeling, almost like helplessness. But he was so tired still, which he hardly saw possible after all of that _sleep_.

_No one here, no one here, all alone_. It was all he could think. And he was uncertain of where to walk to, or if he should try to search for anyone else, because if there was no one else -

This nagged him to a point of feeling hollow again. There was such disarray around him, and Sasuke was unsure of what to make of the destruction, and why was he so alone?

But Sasuke couldn't stand here all day, now - so he walked to the stairs and he found that there were no thrown chairs, no trash or debris, only a clean stairwell to reach the ground floor, and perhaps go home.

He began his descend from Floor 14, and was sure he would find someone to have help from below, surely, because this was very hard to figure out, and he could barely focus through the shadows and the fog cast across his line of sight, this tiredness, the pain, but he did want to go back to sleep again...

On this ordinary day he happened to awake from a long and deep state of being lost - the coma, a long and endless sickness, the never ending period of rest, they'd said there'd been no hope, how were they wrong? - to walk into another world, this other realm, and again find himself lost, and perhaps dead.

* * *

Floor 1. The haze wearing off. The hunger starting to gnaw.

It was ragged - unexplainable, the desire to consume something edible, because what did food taste like, solid and rich food, something true and whole?

But Floor 1. Was completely. Desolate.

And it was worse than Floor 14, had to be worse - papers all over, upturned desks and chairs and the snack machines raided, broken glass everywhere, he could barely even walk...

Blood, on the windows. Smudges of blood, handprints of blood, whirls of blood staining the glass from bleeding fingertips, hands dirtied with it, the blood. Everywhere.

It marked the front entrance, the translucent glass doors that opened with your step, the windows. All stained with smears of tacky liquid dried to a dark hue. Blood from someone, dead, alive? Where did this blood come from?

His voice was lost. Sasuke opened his mouth and realized he had not spoken since awakening. He almost forgot what his own voice sounded like. It felt foreign, so strange to talk. It ground his throat apart.

"Hello..." Too soft for anybody to hear. Louder, this time. _**"Hello."**_

No one. Nothing. Only that same strange silence that spoke clearly of the eerie abandon of this hospital. This unsettling quiet was slowly building on him. Sasuke felt he needed to leave, yet he could not move.

Because something was quite strange about this town. Sasuke forgot the name of the town -_ lived here forever, what is the name, what is it? _- and could not remember, no matter how hard he tried. Some town. Some place, on the corner of the earth, all ragged and strewn apart, without any order.

He took steps over the broken glass, towards the windows -

- and saw the car on fire, and the two flipped over _completely_ _still_, the buildings across the street broken and raided, everything frozen with Death's touch, but no one anywhere, no one even left for dead.

Where was a TV to watch, a newspaper to read, anything, something? How long had it been since he'd last been awake, fully awake, alert? A month, a year, longer? When had this destruction come? Had he been left in that hospital bed, IV still attached - _to die, they were going to let you die _- for days?

All alone, entirely alone, nobody to answer his endless questions, like the planet was now barren of human life, and he had been the accidental exception.

This thought - it overwhelmed him, loomed over him, consumed him, to a point of oblivion.

_No one's coming, all alone, left for dead, no one's coming, no one at all._


	2. Chapter 2

**THE EXCEPTION**

**Author: **Rot_chan

**Summary:** They had prayed, the preachers had preached, begged to God...but no one was exempt. Yet Uchiha Sasuke awakes a survivor of the Plague, an exception, taken in by a group of survivors trying to find other survivors in this dystopian world.

**Rating:** T

**Pairings**: SasuSaku; ShikaIno

**Notes**: Not sure how long I plan to make this story. I'm not sure what I'll do...it's going to be about how humanity can crumble in a lawless world, and how living in a dystopia can really change people. Horror in the near future? Definitely a traitor. I plan to have more than one group of survivors. At the end of this chapter I'll list who is in Naruto's group so far.

* * *

**CHAPTER 2**

**

* * *

**

It was silent - it was always silent in the larger towns, Uzumaki Naruto mused as they entered 'KONOHA: 406,259' and made their way in the rickety school bus past the sign that marked the entrance. They slowly entered the city, the bus (hijacked from an old gas station fifty miles back) jerking and shaking with each pothole and speed bump.

"Pretty void, huh," someone said softly, two seats over - it was one of their youngest, the Hyuuga girl. Naruto felt sympathetic.

Her words were more of a statement than a question, and it was clear as to why: the entire city, of which once had a population in the 400,000s, was now an empty, craggy wasteland. Cars everywhere, untouched, parked at odd angles, left in the middle of streets - _there's someone always lying face down across the wheel _- all in a futile attempt to outrun the Plague.

The Plague. The Sickness. A total pandemic that swept across the world in a matter of a month, unlike anything any medical researcher or scientist had ever encountered in their labs; vicious and deadly beyond imagination, as if brewed in the very satanic pits of hell themselves...

Who were exempt? Who could be saved? The preachers had started preaching, the Catholics especially hopeful, all the followers crying for redemption, _oh Please God, let me be saved, letmebesaved!_-

Useless pleas.

Naruto adjusted the holster on his belt. He always kept his pistol at hand. You never knew who you would encounter in places like these - places without any hope. Any food. Any shelter. There were the grateful ones, the ones who begged to be taken with them, who needed a shoulder to lean on, because they couldn't walk on alone anymore...

And then there were the wayward ones, lost of hope and soul, too desperate and listless with hunger and illness to remember it was wrong to threaten, to kill.

Their bus rolled down the empty town streets. There were some cars overturned from the mad rush to beat the illness; it had rapidly spread and killed in a matter of days, hours for some. Now it seemed that it had stopped spreading as it once had just weeks ago, but any carrier could still infect another. The weaker had went first - they couldn't fight it off. But if there had been stronger ones who had managed to live past the first few weeks of the Plague, they weren't here.

And the bodies still littered the streets, bodies from the more recent deaths. It must have swept Konoha hard, and not too long ago...

"Sure it's safe to be here right now?" It was Kiba, looking outside of the window with unease. Naruto could smell his fear. It was apparent that the boy thought they would all catch it here, that they would get sick and not know it. Welcome to a hell they'd already known.

Just miles ago they'd picked up a drifter, this sixteen year old kid who had to kill his own dog - the dog got sick, didn't want to force it to live - who had no ride and no idea where a safe house was. Just fifty miles North, past Konoha (and wasn't it too damn convenient that they had to pass through to get there?) was a shelter, one they'd radioed in on. It still had some supplies and rations, leftover food. It was one that hadn't held many survivors in the end...

The gas masks would protect them, without a doubt. Yet Naruto knew he would be lying if he told himself that it wasn't eerie entering a place stinking of the death, as they searched for a few who could be living still, who might possibly be cured.

There was the cure - one that had been created when it was too late. A miraculous sort of panacea that was produced when the virus had already, reportedly, wiped out over 89.9% of the population. And when it was produced, it only brought more chaos and an utter animosity from those who were once civil - all to obtain that cure, in case of infection, to cure loved ones, the dying.

But they had gotten it - this almost magical serum, and the syringes, at the last infirmary. In case of emergency infection with one of their own. Naruto knew were a group now, a real group and they had to trust each other and look out for one another, and they needed this plan B. Because when you caught the virus, it wasn't difficult to tell if you were infected.

They all remembered the reports. Warning signs. It was an agenda now, forever engrained in their minds. And some of them - like that girl Haruno, she'd seen it, in her own _mother_ - had witnessed it up-close.

Sudden increase in temperature -

_-fevers, the fevers would soar in hours, 101 first, then 103, then 104..._

A rapid degeneration of muscle and brain function -

-_the last ones they'd found when it was too late, just too late, couldn't even talk like their fucking tongues had been cut out, limp, lifeless_ -

And worst, a sort of insanity and an impairment to make judgement, hallucinations, aggression.

It was painful. Hard to think about.

"Stop being a chickenshit, Inzuka. Don't lose it," Naruto said offhandedly. He got a grunt of agreement from the driver, Nara Shikamaru. They'd picked him up way back in Suna when Naruto and Haruno and the other survivors had stumbled across each other and somehow formed this group with a good cause, because he was great with cars. He could repair almost anything with an engine; he'd been the one to confirm that the van's battery had been dead, no juice left.

But the school bus was better than the van. It held more people, more supplies. The extra masks were in the back with water, rations, clothing. They were gas masks, straight out of a World War II comic book, standard for infection prevention in high risk areas. Areas like Konoha.

And each passenger on the bus wore their mask - they'd had them on before they entered the city. They all resembled a tribe of aliens from Mars, Naruto mused, still able to hold on to his sense of humor even in the disaster. They'd scare the shit out of any survivors they found.

Survivors who'd most likely need a cure. Anyone living on the outside - anyone found in an outside area, like a street, or a building with broken windows or open doors, where possible disease could have spread - could need the cure. Naruto knew that if they found too many, they just wouldn't have enough to administer; not enough syringes anyway. And how could they play God? Choose which could live and die?

Naruto breathed heavily. He felt claustrophobic, despite having worn this mask dozens and dozens of times. They would be safe with these on. It was the thought of possibly finding so many who would not be able to be saved that deeply unnerved him.

* * *

It was now three oh eight and Sasuke knew that he was going to die, that soon he would be dead. Just a memory. Like he hadn't ever been here. And he himself didn't have many memories.

Sasuke was lying on the cold linoleum floors - it was the first floor because he couldn't walk, just couldn't had to lie down for a while, only a little while - but the shallow and uneven sounds of his own breathing that made something in his mind say point-blank,_ You are going to die._

No one wants to die, especially from something so unclear. What did he have? Was it an illness? Or only fear? Would this feeling of sinking go away? Or would it drag him under until he was actually gone?

In these last hours -_ how many hours have I been here? - _Sasuke longed to return to that coma-like state of unawareness he had once been in. And how ironic it was, because he had wished that he had never been there in the first place, those deep depths of his mind, those dark bays of endless sleep.

And Sasuke wished to remember who he truly was and why he had been here and why he was still very cold, if he had a home here and where This Town exactly was, and if he truly was going to die now - _so hard to see hard to think, so cold _- and if so he might as well keep lying here, just staring out these doors, content to curl up and get colder until he was too frozen to feel it anymore...

There was time slowly drawling onwards - and then there were the footsteps, resounding echoes in this big and desolate place, his place, the burial ground, and Sasuke did not want to hear it.

"Do you think-"

It was all so thick, and slow, very slow, oddly slow, like a very slow dream...

"Maybe a survivor-"

Who were they? Who was he?

"Not too sick, not _dead_-"

No, not dead - was he dead or alive, or rather, was he in-between?

"Get him out, out-"

And Sasuke was being taken -_ oh don't get off, OFF_ - and everything hurt all over again, because the cold was being lifted and he was being lifted-_ hurts, it hurts_ -

- and there were the monsters looming over him, sterile, in black - _dead, dead, I am dead _-

But suddenly there was a awful, terrible fire in his veins creeping up, up up - _hurts, fire, ON FIRE _- and someone was screaming so loudly...

Then all at once the fire was out, and Sasuke was alive again.

* * *

Naruto's group:

Naruto, the leader (22), Sakura Haruno (20), Hinata Hyuuga (18), Shikamaru Nara (24), Kiba Inuzuka (16), Ino Yamanaka (20), Neji Hyuuga (19), and Uchiha Sasuke (21)


	3. Chapter 3

**THE EXCEPTION**

**Author**: Rot_chan

**Summary**: They had prayed, the preachers had preached, begged to God...but no one was exempt. Yet Uchiha Sasuke awakes a survivor of the Plague, an exception, taken in by a group of survivors trying to find others who may be alive in this dystopian world.

**Rating**: T

**Pairings**: SasuSaku; ShikaIno

**Notes**: I forgot to mention: this story is a side project. It won't be very long, and in fact, could be halfway completed already. I'm still working on Fifteen Stitches and my other fan-fiction. But reviews are still greatly appreciated. There is plot development in C4. And after 4, only a few more chapters, maybe? I love horror/apocalypse fiction, but I want to finish Fifteen Stitches soon.

* * *

**CHAPTER 3**

* * *

When Sasuke regained his senses, he felt a cool dampness on his forehead, and every muscle felt like lead.

"Are you awake?" A soft voice asked. It reminded him of someone he could not quite place. But he was too heavy to move. His body felt impossible heavy - and everything ached with a strange soreness that resonated in his bones, and talking was too difficult, and so was opening his eyes.

"Don't speak now," she told him. There was only her voice, and the dampness, and so Sasuke did not speak, and only slept instead.

* * *

When Sasuke awoke the second time, the world was titled on its axis and everything was blurred and he still could not remember.

"Now he's awake," someone said, and this voice was not the voice from earlier. It was a man. He did not sound old.

_I'm not really awake,_ Sasuke wanted to say. _I'm barely able to see. _But now that his eyes were cognizant his mouth was too dry and he couldn't form words. So he laid his head back but felt a rattle in his bones and everything shook and the pain intensified.

"Stop the damn bus! He's coming to," someone called. And as the bus halted slowly, the rattling and shaking stopped along with the pain. Sasuke laid still and wished he could cry out in anger, confusion, fear...

When things grew clearer, more focused, and the blurs above grew faces and features and eyes and scars and pink hair and blonde hair, Sasuke knew he truly was not dead, no longer in-between, because these shapes - _people_ had decided for him that he was going to live. Should he be grateful? Or resentful? Grateful to be given another chance to feel warmth and breathe and eat, or resentful to live a life with only a name and unease and too many questions?

"Do you know who you are?" the man who stood over him inquired, and his voice sounded almost far away. Then there were more faces, and the voices grew, the murmurs soft but loud enough to hear -

"He looks sick."

"Pretty beat up. We got there just in time, huh?"

"Well, well. Isn't _he _a looker!"

"Ino!"

The blonde man pushed them away. "Do you know your name?"

Sasuke knew his name, and how old he was, but his mouth was still too dry, his throat burned and _why did everything still hurt so much?_ Then Sasuke remembered the pinprick and the flames that followed, a fire that roared and consumed his veins and insides, that made him feel impossibly worse.

So he struggled to talk, but all that came out was an awful sort of rasping sound.

"I think he should drink something," the woman beside the blonde man said. She had her hair - _pink, why is it pink?_ - tied back. The blonde man with the strangest scars Sasuke had ever seen -_ like knife marks_ - took the canteen from the woman with the familiar voice and held it to his mouth, and with uncertainty Sasuke drank.

This time the water did not nauseate him, but rather, it soothed. And after drinking for what felt like forever, till he could barely breathe, Sasuke tried to speak, finding it easier this time.

"My...name. Uchiha - Sasuke," he managed.

The woman nodded. "I'm Haruno Sakura," she said clearly and carefully. "Do you know where you are? What has happened to you?"

The man beside him knelt down. Where was he, exactly? Sasuke tried to look past their faces. Only windows, dirty and smudged windows, which reminded him of those bloody hospital windows - but these windows weren't caked with that awful rusted color. Only dirt. And seats. It was a car. A bus, like he took when he was a child, just in school.

"I...it's..." He was confused. And when the woman asked him and he tried to remember, Sasuke could not even remember where he had been before the hospital and felt stupid for it.

"It's all right," the man said. "My name's Uzumaki Naruto. We found you at the hospital back in Konoha. You weren't doin' too well. I'm not even sure how you survived. You were the only survivor we could find back there. Pretty lucky."

Haruno Sakura adjusted the cloth beneath Sasuke's head and gently pressed a hand against his chest, halting his movements. "The cure can take a lot out of you. Don't try to move yet. Stay still."

Naruto looked at the Uchiha curiously. "Do you remember what happened?"

Sasuke paused, and did not want to try to speak again. He shook his head instead, his neck sore.

The two exchanged subtle glances. Sakura said with hesitation in her voice, "Something terrible has happened. Not just here - everywhere. And we are afraid to tell you, because..."

"We aren't sure if you should hear something like this right now," Naruto finished when Sakura struggled to grasp the right words. "We just aren't sure."

Sasuke found he could speak again. Because this was a crucial question he'd had since awaking in that vile hospital bed, in that hospital gown, attached to the IV. What had happened that someone would leave him there without trying to wake him? What had happened to make everyone abandon that town in such a madness that he was forgotten?

"I...need to know."

Another person joined them at the back of the bus - a man with dark hair and pale eyes the color of bone, a mark on his forehead that looked too obscure.

"It's the Plague," the man said, shattering the silence. "The Sickness. How could he not - "

Naruto interrupted. "Hyuuga, he doesn't even know where he is. We don't need you to come over here and - "

"But it's clear he should know about the virus," Neji said calmly. "So we can prepare him for the standard procedures. Even if he _is_ an amnesiac..." The man spoke so bluntly of his condition that Sasuke felt almost insulted. But his curiosity piqued when they said plague. _Plague_? Like the Bubonic Plague? But that didn't happen in modern times - that was all in the past, how could this be happening _now_?

"It's the Plague. Some people call it the Sickness. It's deadly, and highly contagious, and can spread very quickly," Sakura whispered. Suddenly everything felt so still and close in this bus, and Sasuke felt his breath catch, and he was almost unsure if he still want to hear this at all -

"And it has killed almost the entire world."

* * *

'Almost the entire world' consisted of many things, and many people, and many people he must have known.

And Sasuke could not believe this, not entirely - it sounded so ridiculous that Sasuke almost laughed, if he _could_ have laughed, but he realized he could barely _breathe_. Because did these people - did they know how many human beings existed? How many human beings created the population, the 'entire world'? Billions.

Billions.

Dead.

_'Almost the entire world'..._

Almost, she had said almost, this Sakura - not everyone. People still existed, there had to be some hope left, hadtobe -

"I knew we shouldn't have told him," Naruto muttered, anxious.

Sakura said, "You said your name was Sasuke, didn't you?" Sasuke could only nod dumbly, because he was still trying to comprehend the impossibility, the _lie_ -

"Sasuke - I am not sure how long you were unconscious - but you showed signs of being in comatose. I'm a nurse. Try to trust me." Her face was expressionless, and her hands were so cool on his bare shoulders that Sasuke realized with her touch he was too warm. Her voice was slow and heavy with truth. Sasuke felt his breathing grow shallow, because this woman was not lying, and he could try to deny it but he knew with her serious eyes and her voice and hands _it was true. _

"We found you when we were searching for survivors. All the others," she swallowed thickly, "- all the others we found in Konoha were already dead. You were barely alive. We searched the hospital for anyone who could have been left behind. And, and we found you, administered the cure, and -"

They said it again - the cure. "What cure? What _sickness_? Did...I..."

Sakura continued. "We think you may have been starting to show some symptoms of the very same sickness that's killed so many." Her voice was still careful and low, just as it had been earlier, when he had been shifting in and out.

Sasuke leaned back. Numb. He was numb.

It struck him, echoed throughout his thoughts, made him deaf to what she was saying, made everything go still: he and these people were somehow the last ones, the only ones left, and if they succumbed - and if they died, the world would die with them.


	4. Chapter 4

**THE EXCEPTION**

**Author**: Rot_chan

**Summary**: They had prayed, the preachers had preached, begged to God...but no one was exempt. Yet Uchiha Sasuke awakes a survivor of the Plague, an exception, taken in by a group of survivors trying to find others who may be alive in this dystopian world.

**Rating**: T

**Pairings**: SasuSaku; ShikaIno

**Notes**: Thanks for 4 great reviews so far. I hope to add more characters to the plot soon. I added Karin, Suigetsu, and Juugo in this chapter, as a group that's staying at the same shelter as Naruto and the others. I made this chapter a bit longer and I will do so with future chapters. Good news also: update for 15 Stitches is coming soon. Anyway, review, please. Tell me what you think of the sort of 'to be continued' ending I wrote this time.

* * *

**CHAPTER 4**

* * *

Naruto leaned his head back against the seat of the bus, wishing they could open a window before remembering that was no longer an option -_ can't take the risk, no way _- as he carefully observed their newest addition. Uchiha Sasuke.

No identification; no long term memory; they'd found the man lying face down on a hospital _floor_. He was an amnesiac (and a silent one at that), mostly likely had been a carrier of the Plague, until...

Naruto remembered how violently Sasuke reacted when Sakura had administered the cure. Wracked with gruesome convulsions, eyes back in his head, and the screams, so bloody, worse than a horror movie -

Naruto shook his head. Uchiha Sasuke was awake now. No more aches and pains, he'd told them. The cure had worked. He was going to live.

Uchiha Sasuke had been lucky.

How long had they scoured Konoha City for the living? Ran out in teams, checking bodies - _no, they were corpses, all corpses already_ - before giving the signal to move on and check an old woman, a kid in the street, a driver lying on the wheel, so many more all around them...and Locust and Main - where the hospital was - it had been the worst.

Naruto blinked, eyes burning, stomach flipping as he tried to purge his mind of grisly images that continued to plague his mind. But one face haunted him - the face of that little girl he'd found on a stoop, couldn't have been more than seven years old, looked like she was only sleeping -

_- but her forehead was gashed, all wet muscle, you could her **skull **-_

Naruto checked the digital watch on his wrist. Nearly 6 PM. They'd reach the shelter before midnight. Soon they could take off the masks, drink, breathe, eat. Naruto felt his stomach turn knew he would give up his ration for someone else hungrier (and there was always someone else who was hungrier).

"Uchiha," Naruto called. Sasuke turned to look at the group's leader. The two had only spoken briefly; Haruno was sitting beside him, but he wasn't speaking much to her either. The news of the pandemic, the bleakness of what they'd told him seemed to have shaken him up. But the guy was virtually unreadable.

"You need a mask. We're not taking any chances," Naruto said. It had only been over an hour since they'd left the outer city after finding their sole survivor. But Sakura had informed them all that the panacea's overall affect was only to destroy the virus attacking your system. It didn't give you immunity - it wore off fast, too fast.

Naruto walked to the back of the bus and returned to Sasuke with a standard gas mask. "Put this on."

Everyone wore them, despite looking ridiculous, terrifying even. Wearing one was the safest way for protection, promoted at all shelters, as it had been in the papers and on the television, when television and the news still existed like they once had.

Hesitantly, the Uchiha put on the mask. Sakura helped him with the straps, pausing before he allowed her to tighten them appropriately. Naruto gave him a standard filter. "The filter lasts for 10 hours, twelve, tops. Sakura is the one who keeps track."

Sasuke looked like all the others now, exactly the same as the rest of them: face visible through the protective shield, skin appearing even paler. His voice came out in that strange hum. "When...is it safe to remove it?"

This question resurfaced an issue that had been debated dozens of times - when was it truly safe to breathe? Not in Konoha. Not in any city, where bacteria could still be growing or airborne, if severe enough. It was nerve-wracking; it was inescapable.

"You can take it off when we reach the shelter. About 30 miles from here," Naruto said after a moment. "We're still in a high-risk area. But even at a shelter - No one is allowed in without a screening first."

_A screening_? It sounded ominous. Sasuke frowned. He felt strange with this thing on his face, as if he was being smothered. He willed himself to take long and even breaths, in and out, in and out again. "A screening?"

Sakura replied, "It's routine. Naruto and I, the others - we have been screened many times. It's like a finger prick. They test for the Sickness in your blood."

It could have been worse. In a sense Sasuke was still so stupified from everything he had been told, that there seemed to be nothing left to fear. It was surreal. He was aware he was detached, so impossibly far away, but he couldn't do anything about it. And it struck Sasuke as almost bitterly _funny_ that he was now with these strangers, fighting to live a life no one would ever want to live if they had a choice.

"You all right, Uchiha?" It was Naruto, the 'group leader', a practical self-proclaimed hero. Sasuke already didn't like him, and he knew it was because Naruto was much too hopeful. He was optimistic about their outcome, about their future and their lives. He had faith. It was odd...

"Hm." Sasuke didn't feel much like talking. It seemed he didn't feel much of anything at all.

* * *

"I used to be a barmaid, you know. A really good one, too. I dealt with the worst bastards, really rude ones, you know? Awful burly guys who called me 'honey-pie'. But the tips were a nice perk."

_This girl won't stop talking,_ Sasuke thought. It was evening already, he knew, because the sky outside the windows of the bus was dark and sprinkled with stars -_ n__obody's using power any more, no lights in the city, no people _- but Ino was very interested in telling him about how she worked in a bar back South before the Plague.

"Yeah. My bar was always filled with bar flies, but we'd have kareoke nights, and let me tell you, when some of us girls sang up there together, we'd -"

"I'd like to rest, if you don't mind," Sasuke spoke flatly, wishing he could get off of this bus. They were at the shelter, everyone's masks had been put in knapsacks, and now they were all being screened, one by one.

The guards at the shelter gates had been clear -_ officious bastards, all dressed in those stupid suits like the whole world's contracted **leprosy **_- the group could send in one member a time to the infirmary, where the blood would be taken and screened, and everyone else was to stay on the bus until called. And if the tests were positive...

Then what? Sasuke didn't know. He did not _want_ to know. He knew it was not possible for him to have contracted the virus, having been 'cured', but it unnerved him to imagine what these people at these so-called safe houses, these "shelters" did to anyone who was screened and positive for this Plague.

"Aren't you touchy," Ino said. She was insulted, yet Sasuke couldn't bring himself to explain. When you knew the world was falling to pieces you didn't remember to be polite.

Sasuke wondered how it was possible to feel tired so soon. Did people who awoke from comatose become tired more easily? His train of thought grew only worse - could he perhaps still have some condition and not know of it? An injury to his internal organs? His -

_Stopstopstopstopstop.._.

Without the mask on, it was much easier to breathe deeply and calmly, to count his breaths, his uneven pulse.

"You don't look well. Maybe Sakura should check you out," Ino said offhandedly. He had offended her, it was obvious. Sasuke found it difficult to interact with these people, who he hardly knew but would be forced to get to know. Because who else did he have? Who else waited for him, or hoped for him, or worried for him?

_No one_, something said clearly. _No one, because they're probably **rotting** by now, and _-

"Sasuke? Uchiha Sasuke?" Sasuke opened his eyes and looked up. Haruno Sakura - he knew before he even looked. She stood at the front of the bus, eyes scanning the seats until she met his gaze in the back row.

"It's time to be screened," she said. Sasuke noticed for the first time that without that mask on her eyes were green.

* * *

It was almost midnight, and Karin was tired. But Suigetsu and his snoring wasn't making it easy to rest.

"Shut. _Up._" Karin gave his shoulder a shove. Around them were tiny groups of survivors, tucked into similar sleeping bags. This shelter, compared to the last, was paradise. A sleeping bag couldn't be compared to a blanket and floor.

But then Karin got stuck sleeping next to Suigetsu, the newest member of her group.

Suigetsu was trying to find his brother. He'd approached them at the last shelter Karin and her companion Juugo had been at, in Suna. And poor, poor Suigetsu was so alone, and wanted to "make friends" with Juugo. Just not _her_.

Karin often felt like pointing out statistics of those who were dead and alive and shove them in Suigetsu's face - only to prove to him that his brother was probably rotting on the side of a road right now, _dead _-

"Like you're any better," Suigetsu mumbled, giving Karin a hard glare. "You make noises when you sleep."

Karin glared back, eyes bleary without her glasses. "I don't make noises, you idiot. I never talk in my sleep."

Suigetsu suddenly looked amused. "I didn't say you talk. You _GRUNT_. LIKE AN ANIMAL."

_"SHHHH!"_ Someone was trying to sleep, and it wasn't them.

"Do you remember what day it is?" Suigetsu asked quietly.

Karin paused. "August fifteenth."

Suigets said slowly, "It's been two months since this all...you know."

Karin shifted in her bag. She was warm even with light clothes on. Air conditioning was a luxury that no longer existed.

"Yeah. You're right. What a shock," she snorted. But she knew it was true. Two months. That was all it had taken for nearly the entire world to die. She heard Suigetsu slowly creep back into his sleeping back and zip it up tight.

"95.9 percent..." Karin murmured, thinking aloud. She suddenly felt all alone...

She wriggled out of her bag, too restless to lie still. Karin crept past all the others sleeping and stood against the door, needing air. Outside she heard voices._ New survivors passing through_.

More remained than Karin ever thought there would be. It was strange that less than 6 percent of the world remained and it felt like so many of that 6 percent was right here, on the outskirts of Konoha.

Slowly she peeked through the small window in the door. They were taking all new survivors to the infirmary, the men in sterilization suits - but one survivor caught Karin's eye. A handsome boy with a dark gaze and a rather pale complexion. He was whisked through double doors to be tested for the Sickness. And for his sake, Karin hoped he wouldn't be marked as one of 'them'. One of the ill.

Because Karin had seen what happened when there wasn't enough drugs. _Cast out the sickest, tell them to get help elsewhere._ Medical shelters aimed to avoid the spread of infection by all means. As a nurse when the Plague first spread she'd tried to help the ailing who were already too far gone, before being told that it was time to give up and that _nurses weren't needed to check the dead..._

Karin shivered. She felt almost paranoid. And she was curious - how many people would they house now? There were over one dozen of the camping here already, and quarters were getting close.

But they could afford room for someone who seemed strong and capable, like that boy. Who actually had a chance of remaining alive.

* * *

At 3 AM, everyone was negative.

At least, that was what Sasuke was told. Sakura whispered outside the infirmary, "Everyone came up negative." The rest of the group was milling about the small area outside of the medicinal unit.

Sasuke paused. "And that's a good thing." Sakura nodded. It was a good thing - one of the best things they could hear right now, to keep their frayed hope from dying.

"Right. No Plague for us. So we can stay. Naruto's making arrangements right now," Sakura said. Sasuke studied her face and saw she had a slight bruise near her temple, as if she'd been punched, and her eyes were shadowed with thick bags.

Sasuke asked, "Naruto - I'm assuming he makes all of your "arrangements" for the group. As in...a leader." Sasuke did not know what Naruto was exactly and why he had been picked to direct and watch over them. Sasuke didn't know what skills he possessed, but Naruto seemed to have a strange pull over everyone - that commanding personality he could barely tolerate.

Sakura rubbed her eyes and pulled back her hair. She carried a knapsack on her shoulders that sagged down her back. He wondered what she kept in it. First aid, supplies? Not everyone in their group carried one.

"Yes. I guess you could call him our leader. But...it wasn't really decided. Naruto is just..._Naruto_. Before the Plague he was training for the air force. And he doesn't mind doing the dirty work. He's seen the worst of the worst, I mean."

_The worst of the worst._ Sasuke played with this in his mind. In a way, it all made sense. These people (Uzumaki Naruto included) most likely witnessed terrible things he could not imagine, results of this 'Plague', that all happened while he was trapped in a long and dreamless sleep.

"Aa..." But Sasuke could hardly pay attention. He was growing bleary, and staying awake was beginning to feel like a struggle. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly before opening them again, his lids hot.

"I should've told you earlier," Sakura murmured, "that your cure - it can cause severe fatigue."

Sasuke stared, curious. "How do you know all of this?"

Sakura gave him that coy smile. Rather, it was her smile. "Well for one, I'm a nurse, remember? I know these kinds of things. And two -"

Suddenly, Naruto jogged over to them, and Sakura breathed out deeply, cutting off her thought mid-sentence. Sasuke noticed a few dog tags jangling across his undershirt; Naruto had discarded the black sweater he'd been wearing before. "We've got the OK to shack up here for a couple of days...maybe longer, if they don't get anymore people. And afterwards -"

Sakura nodded, seeming to finish for him. "We head to Sound."

Sasuke didn't know how traveling all the way to a faraway city -_ how much father from here? Hundreds of miles, thousands_? - could increase their chances of survival, but he wouldn't ask now. He was tired, exhausted, and only wanted sleep.

Naruto led him and the others into a tiny room, with strange lumps scattered across the linoleum floors that turned out to be bodies in sleeping bags upon closer inspection. It was so dark inside Sasuke could barely see. But those men in those alien-suits nearly glowed, and it made him have a slight chill. _A bad horror movie - that's what it's all like._

They were handed sleeping bags by those glowing men, and they laid down together - Naruto said they should stay close here. And in this tiny room, though vacant of furniture and with only one door to the facilities, Sasuke felt almost claustrophobic.

It was already three-thirty-five AM and Sasuke found himself laying facing a wall on his left and Sakura on his right.

They stared at each other for a moment before she zipped herself up in her sleeping bag. Sasuke thought he heard her utter something like a good-night before rolling onto her side.

"Haruno," Sasuke found himself saying after a moment, despite willing himself to hold his tongue.

Silence. He was sure she'd fallen asleep until he heard her reply almost dryly, "Just Sakura."

"_Sakura_, then."

"Hmm?"

"...You never finished what you had to say from earlier." It had been nagging him though he couldn't quite understand as to why.

Sakura rolled over and gave him an almost bitter look, pursing her lips. "Oh. Right. Well, I guess I don't have to keep it a secret at all. It's silly, really, to do so."

She laid onto her stomach, her eyes far away, not meeting his. "I know so much about the cure...because I had the cure, myself."


End file.
